We always like it when candy companies help out good causes, and this is no exception. For every game of Tic Tac Toe that is played, Tic Tac will donate $1 to CancerCare, up to $5000, in addition to the $100,000 donation they’re already making. I have no doubt we can reach that $5000 limit pretty quickly!
Plus, if you happen to be in Times Square on August 19, Tic Tac will be attempting to set the world record for the most Tic Tac Toe games played at one time. It’s all part of a larger partnership with CancerCare to raise awareness of the effect cancer can have on everyone, including friends and loved ones, those fighting the disease, and health care providers.
So what are you waiting for? Go play some Tic Tac Toe already!
Tic Tacs have never been my favorite mint – they’re just too wimpy for my tastes. I’ve always preferred mints that are strong enough to make my tongue sting. I like the mellow vanilla outside of the white mint ones, but to me it doesn’t really go with the minty center, and the orange-flavored ones were just another fruit and mint combo for me to dislike.
I haven’t had a Tic Tac in years, but it seems like they’ve really expanded their flavor lineup – including this brand-new flavor combination, Melon Mango (two flavors in one!). Armed with a hefty Big Pack courtesy of the All Candy Expo, I endeavored to see if my opinion of them would be improved by these new flavors.
If SweeTarts made a small, nondescript cherry version of its candies (in the shape of an engorged Tic Tac), they’d taste just like the Tic Tac Chill Exotic Cherry. Not bad. Not great. I like the tartness, but there’s not much “cherry” going on here. Surely nothing exotic.
The Tic Tac Chill series of sugarfree flavors (Exotic Cherry and Paradise Mint) come in a plastic box substantially larger than regular Tic Tacs – probably because the candies inside are about double the size of the standard ones. (Box note: in addition to the regular flip-top opening, the Tic Tac Chill containers have a front slide panel opening – where you see the name – that’s kind of cool and pretty straightforward to use, I thought. But Tic Tac seems to think it’s so complicated to operate that they’ve got video instructions online… go figure.)
Now, I haven’t tried the Paradise Mint, but there’s no mention of breath-freshening on the Exotic Cherry, so I consider these straight candy. Except that candy and sugarfree sound like Punch and Judy to me: they don’t tend to get along in my puppet theater.
But at least these Tic Tacs aren’t sweetened with aspartame; they have the much better-tasting xylitol. This sugar substitute also reduces dental plaque, supposedly, by attracting bad microorganisms to itself – then starving them to death because it’s not a real sugar they can use. Tell me about it.
But hey, if you want to trick your mouth and get a fairly weak cherry Sweetart-esque experience in a small package, Tic Tac Chill Exotic Cherry might be just the ticket. Don’t expect any high cherry drama, though.
The new Chill varieties of Tic Tac will be hitting shelves soon.
“Oohh, cool! New Tic Tac flavors! I think I might grab one of these mango ones… and one of these… wait! What? What the heck is a Tropical Acerola? How do you even pronounce acerola? Ahh, who cares, best buy one anyway.” That was pretty much the conversation I had in my head as I found myself looking at these “summer edition” Tic Tacs.
Eventually a bit of search engine action solved the mystery – acerola is actually a wild tropical cherry native to the West Indies. One has to wonder the thought process of a Tic Tac flavor guy sitting around and thinking, “Hmmm! I know! Let’s introduce a totally obscure fruit flavor! What about the acerola?” I, for one, am glad he didn’t choose to go with durian (hint: the ripe fruit is meant to smell like rotting human flesh). (And I bet you didn’t think you would ever see the expression “rotting human flesh” on a candy website! Hey, I like to keep it interesting.)
Having never tried an actual acerola, I can only say that the Tic Tac version is quite nice. It actually tastes like a cross between raspberry and mint, with a decidedly “hot” feeling on your tongue. It works really well as a more gentle type of mint with an added dash of the tropical, and it really did have a summery taste to it.
Mango is one of those flavors which I think is very hard to reproduce in candy – a bit like banana, you never really get a true fruit flavor coming through. This one, like the acerola, is slightly spicy in nature. The first taste is actually pretty mango-ish and the flavor stays around for quite a while.
While neither of these set my world on fire, they were nice additions to the Tic Tac flavors already out there. Given that it’s currently winter Down Under, they served as a nice reminder of days by the beach and drinks by the pool. Now if only I could somehow convince Candy Addict to sponsor an acerola tasting trip to the West Indies….
There’s something about the mint variety of candy that makes me smile. I think it’s the specialized packaging. Those mint tins and the plastic containers make mints the handiest of the hard candies. They’re designed for portability, for sticking in your pocket or your purse and popping in your mouth when you need a quick breath pick-me-up. I mean, everyone recognizes that a small, hinged metal tin means Altoids. Even PEZ began as a mint, which evolved when those wonderfully designed dispensers started to gain faces.
And then there’s the wonderful plastic rectangle of the Tic Tacs. Ah, Tic Tacs, my 1 1/2 calorie treat. You can hear them shake at the bottom of a bag and immediately know what they are. It’s pretty nifty that they’re trying out new flavors. We looked at the Cherry Passion Tic Tacs not too long ago, and now I’m checking out the new Bold flavors: Berry Sour and Apple Sour.
